Well if the talk is about GUI which helps and does not write or generate ebuilds, there was abeni, which had many nice features, probably someone could pick up on its development and make it working again.

If anyone wants to get patches into abeni and has trouble contacting Rob I still have upstream access (just haven't looked at the code for the last two or three years).

Can someone tell me exactly how a gui for creating an ebuild is more complex than say creating the GUI for an entire operating system? If Gnome, KDE,and the Explorer shell/windowmanager exist and handle that rather difficult task how can a front end for an install script be so impossible that it should not be attempted? The amount of variability involved in making an operating system GUI work is far greater than anything that could occur with an install script that in our case won't have to deal with nearly as many scenarios. I said this once and I will say it again the people who are against the very idea of such a tool are effectively denying that things like Visual basic are not only possible but already exist and have done so for years._________________Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

Creating a GUI for ebuild writing is like creating a GUI for text editing that does not feature a text editing component as its major interface element.

Really, if you have nothing usefull to contribute to the discussion, shut up.

Thanks for that useful contribution. It's good to see that you have a well backed up and properly researched argument as to why I'm wrong, and why such a GUI is actually possible after all. It's really nice to learn from people like yourself who have lots of experience in the ebuild creation area.

I was thinking about splitting off all the bullshit in this thread, but appearently that would cripple it and and leave behind 3 or 5 posts. Hence, i'll just lock it if anyone makes a contribution as low as the last ones were._________________Dinosaur week! (Ok, this thread is so last week)

ebuild creation should be made nice and easy so users can contribute to gentoo. A GUI would help people who are learning to do it so what is the problem_________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

ebuild creation should be made nice and easy so users can contribute to gentoo.

Fact is, ebuild creation is not easy. There is far too much variance in upstream build systems.

Quote:

A GUI would help people who are learning to do it so what is the problem

No, a GUI would lead to lots of very poor quality ebuilds which in turn would lead to more broken systems.

The typing is not the hard part about ebuild creation. Understanding the build system and ensuring that it behaves correctly is. A GUI won't help you figure out how to work around upstream abusing autotools, dynamically checking for dependencies, violating DESTDIR, not parallelising correctly, not linking correctly or stripping variables.

You want to know how to make ebuild creation easier? Simple. Get the devmanual out from Plasmaroo's control and into QA's hands where it belongs. Plasmaroo's only contribution to it has been to stick his name on it in big letters and hide away the names of those who did the work (which is in violation of the licence under which the devmanual is distributed), whilst ignoring patches, requests for change and error reports. If properly maintained, the devmanual will make ebuild creation massively easier, because much of the arcane knowledge currently required will be codified.

ebuild creation should be made nice and easy so users can contribute to gentoo.

Fact is, ebuild creation is not easy. There is far too much variance in upstream build systems.

thats why 1. all ebuilds would be checked by a dev and 2 that is why we have masking.

ciaranm wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

A GUI would help people who are learning to do it so what is the problem

No, a GUI would lead to lots of very poor quality ebuilds which in turn would lead to more broken systems.

And that is why they would be checked by developers. Are you trying to suggest that Gentoo would allow unchecked ebuilds by users into the tree? Dont be stupid.

ciaranm wrote:

The typing is not the hard part about ebuild creation. Understanding the build system and ensuring that it behaves correctly is. A GUI won't help you figure out how to work around upstream abusing autotools, dynamically checking for dependencies, violating DESTDIR, not parallelising correctly, not linking correctly or stripping variables.

easy way to sort that one out, give ebuild-creating users a mini-manual and a Gentoo testing overlay to allow them to test it on their own system.

You seem to want it all to be as hard as possible, dont forget that although some upstream devs do abuse certain facets there are alot that dont.

ciaranm wrote:

You want to know how to make ebuild creation easier? Simple. Get the devmanual out from Plasmaroo's control and into QA's hands where it belongs. Plasmaroo's only contribution to it has been to stick his name on it in big letters and hide away the names of those who did the work (which is in violation of the licence under which the devmanual is distributed), whilst ignoring patches, requests for change and error reports. If properly maintained, the devmanual will make ebuild creation massively easier, because much of the arcane knowledge currently required will be codified.

From what i see by reading it again he seems to have cleared it up from the mess it was in_________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

ebuild creation should be made nice and easy so users can contribute to gentoo.

Fact is, ebuild creation is not easy. There is far too much variance in upstream build systems.

thats why 1. all ebuilds would be checked by a dev and 2 that is why we have masking.

Uh, won't stop users from dishing them out on the forums.

Quote:

ciaranm wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

A GUI would help people who are learning to do it so what is the problem

No, a GUI would lead to lots of very poor quality ebuilds which in turn would lead to more broken systems.

And that is why they would be checked by developers. Are you trying to suggest that Gentoo would allow unchecked ebuilds by users into the tree? Dont be stupid.

No, I'm suggesting that they'll be allowed on the forums and in bugzilla.

Quote:

ciaranm wrote:

The typing is not the hard part about ebuild creation. Understanding the build system and ensuring that it behaves correctly is. A GUI won't help you figure out how to work around upstream abusing autotools, dynamically checking for dependencies, violating DESTDIR, not parallelising correctly, not linking correctly or stripping variables.

easy way to sort that one out, give ebuild-creating users a mini-manual and a Gentoo testing overlay to allow them to test it on their own system.

There's no mini manual. There's a hugeass devmanual, and that only covers the basics.

Quote:

You seem to want it all to be as hard as possible, dont forget that although some upstream devs do abuse certain facets there are alot that dont.

Actually, there aren't. Very few packages are perfect and have no quirks.

Quote:

ciaranm wrote:

You want to know how to make ebuild creation easier? Simple. Get the devmanual out from Plasmaroo's control and into QA's hands where it belongs. Plasmaroo's only contribution to it has been to stick his name on it in big letters and hide away the names of those who did the work (which is in violation of the licence under which the devmanual is distributed), whilst ignoring patches, requests for change and error reports. If properly maintained, the devmanual will make ebuild creation massively easier, because much of the arcane knowledge currently required will be codified.

From what i see by reading it again he seems to have cleared it up from the mess it was in

From what you see of reading it, what exactly has he changed beyond the size of font in which his name is written?

I still see the argument as it compares to Dreamweaver. People who use Dreamweaver know how to use Dreamweaver. They don't know how to create secure, correct, clean HTML.

By that same regard, those who are using an ebuild creator GUI to *avoid* learning how to create ebuilds are not going to learn how to correctly write an ebuild.

Think of a potential scenario here. A user writes an ebuild with this magical gui tool, and submits it to bugzilla. If the developer says, "Sorry, that won't work becasue of reason <foo>, fix it up and resubmit" the user isn't going to know how to fix that stuff, and you're pretty much back to square one.

Anyway, this is my take on the whole thing -- if the learning curve for writing ebuilds is too high, then tell us where the documentation can be improved so it can be simpler to understand. Writing ebuilds isn't going to get any easier, but we can improve on how to help you along the way._________________If it ain't broke, tweak it. packages | dvds | blurays | blog | home